Sugar Daddy (16 page)

“Liberty,” I said. “That’s just fine, Brittany. You did a great job. I hope you can come back and help us out again sometime.”

“I sure will.” Pocketing the fifteen dollars I had given her, Brittany went out, giving a little wave over her shoulder.

At the same time, the bedroom door burst open, and Carrington came flying into the main room in her pajamas. “Liberty!” She flung her arms around my hips and hugged me as if we hadn’t seen each other in a year. “I missed you. Where did you go? Why did you stay out so long? Who’s that yellow-haired man?”

I glanced quickly at Mike. Although he had forced a smile, it was obviously not the time for introductions. His gaze traveled slowly around the room, adhering briefly to the worn-out sofa, the places on the coffee table where the wood-grain veneer had chipped. It surprised me that I felt a sting of defensiveness, that it felt so uncomfortable to see myself from his perspective.

I hunched over my little sister and kissed her hair. “That’s my new friend. He and I are going to watch a show. You’re supposed to be in bed. Asleep. Go on, Carrington.”

“I want you to come with me,” she protested.

“No, it’s not my bedtime, it’s yours. Go on.”

“But I’m not tired.”

“I don’t care. Go lie down and close your eyes.”

“Will you tuck me in?”

“No.”

“But you
always
tuck me in.”

“Carrington—”

“It’s all right,” Mike said. “Tuck her in, Liberty. I’ll look through the videos.”

I flashed him a grateful smile. “It’ll only take a minute. Thanks, Mike.”

I took Carrington into the bedroom and closed the door. Carrington, like most children, was ruthless when she had a tactical advantage. Usually I had no problem letting her cry and holler if she didn’t like it. But we both knew I didn’t want her making a scene in front of my visitor.

“I’ll be quiet if you let me keep the light on,” she wheedled.

I hoisted her into the bed and pulled the covers up to her chest, and gave her a picture book from the nightstand. “All right. Stay in bed and—I mean this, Carrington—I don’t want to hear a peep out of you.”

She opened the book. “I can’t read the words by myself.”

“You know all the words. We’ve read that story a hundred times. Stay here and be good. Or else.”

“What’s the ‘or else’?”

I gave her an ominous stare. “Four words, Carrington. Hush and stay put.”

“Okay.” She subsided behind the book until all that was visible of her was a pair of small hands clamped on either side of the cover.

I went back into the living room, where Mike was sitting stiffly on the sofa.

At some point in the process of dating someone, whether you’ve gone out one time or a hundred times, a moment occurs when you know exactly how much significance that person will have in your life. You know this person will be an important part of your future, or you know he’s only someone to pass the time with. Or you wouldn’t care if you never saw him again. I regretted having invited Mike into the apartment. I wished he was gone so I could have a bath and get in bed. I smiled at him.

“Find anything you want to watch?” I asked.

He shook his head, gesturing to the trio of rented movies on the coffee table. “I’ve already seen those.” He gave me a sort of cardboard-looking smile. “You’ve got a ton of kids’ movies. I guess your sister stays with you a lot?”

“All the time.” I sat next to him. “I’m Carrington’s guardian.”

He looked bewildered. “Then she’s not going back?”

“Back to where?” I asked, my confusion mirroring his. “Our parents are both gone.”

“Oh.” He looked away from me. “Liberty…are you sure she’s your sister and not your daughter?”

What did he mean, was I sure? “Are you asking if I had a baby and somehow forgot about it?” I asked, more stunned than angry. “Or are you asking if I’m lying? She’s my sister, Mike.”

“Sorry. Sorry.” Chagrin corrugated his forehead. He spoke rapidly. “I guess there’s not much resemblance between you. But it doesn’t really matter if you’re her mom or not. The result is the same, isn’t it?”

Before I could reply the bedroom door burst open. Carrington ventured into the room, her face wreathed in anxiety. “Liberty, something happened.”

I stood from the sofa like I’d just sat on a hot stove-plate. “What do you mean, something happened? What? What?”

“Something went down my throat without my permission.”

Shit.

Fear wrapped around my heart like barbed wire. “What went down your throat, Carrington?”

Her face crumpled and turned red. “My lucky penny,” she said, and began to cry.

Trying to think above the panic, I recalled the stray brown penny we’d found on the carpeted elevator floor. Carrington had been keeping it in the dish on our nightstand. I rushed over and picked her up. “How did you swallow it? What were you doing with that dirty penny in your mouth?”

“I don’t know,” she wailed. “I just put it in there and then it jumped down my throat.”

I was dimly aware of Mike in the background, mumbling something about how this wasn’t a good time, maybe he should go. We both ignored him.

I grabbed the phone and dialed the pediatrician, sitting with Carrington in my lap. “You could have choked on it,” I scolded. “Carrington, don’t put pennies or nickels or dimes or anything like that in your mouth ever again. Did it hurt your throat? Did it go all the way down when you swallowed?”

She stopped crying as she considered my questions solemnly. “I think I feel it in my zorax,” she said. “It’s stuck.”

“There’s no such thing as a zorax.” My pulse was hammering. The answering service put me on hold. I wondered if swallowing a penny would give you metal poisoning. Were pennies still made of copper? Was the penny going to lodge somewhere in Carrington’s esophagus and require an operation for its removal? How much would that kind of operation cost?

The woman at the other end of the phone was annoyingly calm as I described the emergency. She took down the information and said the pediatrician would call back within ten minutes. Hanging up the phone, I continued to hold Carrington in my lap, her bare feet dangling.

Mike approached us both. I saw from his expression that this would be forever engraved in his mind as the date from hell. He wanted to leave almost as badly as I wanted him to go.

“Look,” he said awkwardly, “you’re a gorgeous girl, and you’re sweet as all get-out, but…I don’t need this in my life right now. I need someone with no baggage. It’s just…I can’t help you pick up the pieces. I’ve got too many of my own pieces to pick up. You probably don’t understand.”

I understood. Mike wanted a girl with no problems and no past experiences, someone who came with a guarantee that she would never make mistakes or disappoint or hurt him.

Later I would feel sorry for him. I knew there was a lot of disappointment in store for Mike, in his search for the woman with no baggage. But for the moment I felt only annoyance at him. I thought of how Hardy had always come to the rescue at times like this, the way he would stride into a room and take charge, and the incredible relief I felt at knowing he was there. But Hardy wasn’t coming. All I had was a useless male who didn’t even think to ask if he could do something to help.

“That’s fine.” I tried to sound casual. I wanted to throw something, like you would to get rid of a stray dog. “Thank you for the date, Mike. We’ll be fine. If you wouldn’t mind seeing yourself to the door—”

“Sure,” he said hastily. “Sure.”

He vanished.

“Am I gonna die?” Carrington inquired, sounding interested and mildly concerned.

“Only if I catch you with another penny in your mouth,” I said.

The pediatrician called, and he interrupted my frantic chatter. “Miss Jones, is your sister wheezing or choking?”

“She’s not choking.” I looked into Carrington’s face. “Let me hear you breathe, baby.”

She complied enthusiastically, hyperventilating like a phone pervert. “No wheezing,” I told the doctor, and turned back to my sister. “That’s enough, Carrington.”

I heard the doctor chuckle. “Carrington’s going to be just fine. What I need you to do is check her stools for the next couple of days to make certain the coin passes. If you can’t find it, we may have to take an X-ray to make certain it hasn’t lodged somewhere. But I can almost guarantee you’ll see that penny in the commode.”

“Can I have a hundred-percent guarantee?” I asked. “‘Almost’ is just not working for me today.”

He chuckled again. “I don’t usually give out hundred-percent guarantees, Miss Jones. But for you I’ll make an exception. One full-out guarantee for a penny in the commode within forty-eight hours.”

For the next two days I had to poke around in the toilet with a wire hanger every time Carrington reported progress. The penny was eventually found. In the months afterward, however, Carrington told everyone who would listen she had a lucky penny in her tummy. It was only a matter of time, she assured me, until something big happened to us.

Hair is serious business in Houston. It amazed me how much people were willing to pay for the services at Salon One. Being blond, in particular, was a serious investment of time and money, and Salon One gave women the best color of their lives. The salon was known for a tricolor blond that was so good, women would fly in from out of state for it. There was always a waiting list for any of the stylists, but for the head stylist and part-owner, Zenko, the wait was three months minimum.

Zenko was a small man with a powerful presence and the electric grace of a dancer. Although Zenko had been born and raised in Katy, he’d gone to England for an apprenticeship. When he returned, he had lost his first name and had gained an authentic-sounding British accent. Everyone loved that accent. We loved it even when he was yelling at one of us behind the scenes.

Zenko yelled a lot. He was a perfectionist, not to mention a genius. And when something wasn’t just the way he liked it, there were fireworks. But oh, what a business he had created. It had won Salon of the Year from magazines like
Texas Monthly, Elle,
and
Glamour
. Zenko himself had appeared in a documentary film about a famous actress. He’d been busy straightening her long red hair with a flat iron while she answered an interviewer’s questions. That documentary had boosted Zenko’s career, already thriving, into a white glare of fame known by few stylists. Now he had his own line of products, all packaged in glittering silver cans and bottles with star-shaped tops.

To me, the interior of Salon One looked like an English manor house, appointed with polished oak floors, antiques, and ceilings with medallions and hand-painted designs. When a client wanted coffee, it was served in bone china cups on a silver tray. If she wanted diet Coke, it was poured into tall glasses over Evian-water ice cubes. There was a large room with styling stations, and a few private rooms for celebrities and megawealthy clients, and a shampoo room filled with candlelight and classical music.

As an apprentice, I didn’t actually get to cut anyone’s hair for a year. I watched and learned, I did errands for Zenko, I brought refreshments to customers who wanted them, and sometimes I applied deep conditioning treatments with hot towels and swaths of foil. I gave manicures and hand massages to some clients while they waited for Zenko. The most fun was being enlisted to give pedicures to ladies who were having a spa day together. While the women chatted, the other pedicurist and I worked silently on their feet, and we got to hear the best and newest gossip.

They talked first about who’d had what done lately, and what needed to be done on themselves, and whether having Botox injected in your cheeks was worth giving up your smile. They talked about husbands briefly, and then it turned to the children, their private schools, their friends, their achievements and disorders. Many of the children were sent to psychotherapists to catalog all the little damages it does to a soul to have whatever you want whenever you want it. These things were so far removed from my life, it seemed we were from different planets. But then there were more familiar-sounding stories that reminded me of Carrington, and sometimes it was all I could do to keep from exclaiming, “Yes, that happened to my little sister too,” or “I know exactly what you’re talking about.”

I kept my mouth shut, however, because Zenko had instructed all of us sternly that we must never, ever volunteer anything about our personal lives. Clients didn’t want to hear our opinions, he had warned, and they didn’t want to become friends. They came to Salon One to relax and be treated with absolute professionalism.

I heard a lot though. I knew which relatives were having arguments over who was monopolizing the family jet, who was suing whom over the management of trusts and estates, whose husband liked to go on canned hunts to shoot exotic game, where to go for the best custom-made chairs. I heard about scandals and successes, about the best parties, the favorite charities, and all the intricacies of leading a full-time social life.

I liked Houston women, who were funny and frank, and always interested in what was new and fashionable. Of course there were a few grand old ladies who insisted on having their hair permed, cut, and ratted into a big round ball, a style Zenko loathed and privately referred to as “the Drain Clog.” However, even Zenko wasn’t going to refuse these wives of multimillionaires who wore ashtray-sized diamonds on their fingers and could wear their hair any way they wanted.

The salon was also frequented by men of all shapes and sizes. Most were well dressed, with scrupulously maintained hair and skin and nails. Cowboy images to the contrary, Texan men are pretty fastidious about their appearance, everything scrubbed and clipped and strictly controlled. Before long I had assembled a clientele of regulars who came for lunch-hour manicures or neck and eyebrow trims. There were a few attempts at flirtation, especially from the younger ones, but Zenko had rules about that. And that was fine with me. At that time in my life I wasn’t interested in flirtation or romance. I wanted steady work and tip money.

A couple of the girls, including Angie, managed to keep part-time sugar daddies on the side. The arrangements were discreet enough that Zenko either didn’t notice or deliberately looked the other way. The agreement between an older, wealthier man and a younger woman didn’t appeal to me, but at the same time I was fascinated by it.

There is a subculture of sugar daddies and sugar babies in most big cities. The arrangement is by its very nature temporary. But both parties seem to like its impermanence, and there is a kind of safety in its unspoken rules. The relationship starts out with something casual like drinks or dinner, but if the girl plays it right, she can coax a sugar daddy into paying for things like tuition, vacations, clothes, even plastic surgery. According to Angie, the arrangement rarely involved the direct transfer of money. Cash scrubs the romantic veneer off the relationship. Sugar daddies prefer to think of it as a special friendship in which they provide gifts and help to a deserving young woman. And sugar babies convince themselves that a nice boyfriend should want to help out his girlfriend, and in return she would naturally want to show her appreciation by spending time with him.

“But what if you don’t want to sleep with him one night, and he’s just bought you a car?” I asked Angie skeptically. “You still sort of have to, don’t you? How is that different from being a—”

I caught myself as I saw the warning twitch of her mouth.

“It’s not all about sex,” Angie said tautly. “It’s about friendship. If you can’t understand that, I’m not going to waste my time trying to explain.”

I apologized immediately and said I was from a small town and didn’t always have a sophisticated understanding of things. Mollified, Angie forgave me. And she added that if I was smart, I’d get a generous boyfriend too, and it would help me achieve my goals a lot faster.

But I didn’t want trips to Cabo or Rio, or designer clothes, or the trappings of a luxe life. All I wanted was to honor the promises I had made to myself and Carrington. My modest ambitions included a good home, and the means to keep us both clothed and fed, and health insurance with a dental plan. I didn’t want any of that to come from a sugar daddy. The obligation of it, the gift-giving and sex dressed in the trappings of friendship…it was a road I knew I wouldn’t be able to negotiate well.

Too many potholes.

Among the important people who came to Salon One was Mr. Churchill Travis. If you’ve ever subscribed to
Fortune
magazine, or
Forbes,
or a similar publication, you know something about him. Unfortunately I had no clue who he was, since I had no interest in finance and never reached for
Forbes
unless I needed fly-swatting material.

One of the first things you noticed upon meeting Churchill was his voice, so low and gravelly you could almost feel it underfoot. He wasn’t a big man, medium height at most, and when he slouched you could have called him short. Except if Churchill Travis slouched, everyone else in the room did too. His build was lean but for a barrel chest and arms that were capable of straightening a horseshoe. Churchill was a man’s man, able to hold his liquor and shoot straight and negotiate like a gentleman. He’d worked hard for his money, paid just about every kind of dues there were.

Churchill was most comfortable around old-fashioned types like himself. He knew which areas of housework were men’s territory, and he knew which were women’s. The only time he ever went into a kitchen was to pour himself coffee. He was genuinely perplexed by men who took an interest in china patterns or ate alfalfa sprouts or sometimes contemplated their feminine sides. Churchill had no feminine side, and he would have taken a swing at anyone would might have dared to suggest otherwise.

Churchill’s first visit to Salon One happened around the time I started working there. One day the serenity of the salon was interrupted by a flurry of excitement, stylists murmuring, clients’ heads turning. I caught a glimpse of him—a thick ruff of steel-colored hair, dark gray suit—as he was guided to one of Zenko’s VIP rooms. He paused in the doorway, his gaze crossing the main room. His eyes were dark, the kind of brown that makes the irises nearly indistinguishable from the pupils. He was a good-looking old coot, but there was something off-beat about him, a hint of the eccentric.

Our gazes caught. He went still, his eyes narrowing as he stared at me intently. And then I had the curious feeling, nearly impossible to describe…a sort of pleasant catch deep in my chest, in a place words couldn’t reach. I felt soothed and relaxed and expectant, I could actually feel the tiny muscles in my forehead and jaw softening. I wanted to smile at him but before I could he had gone into the room with Zenko.

“Who was that?” I asked Angie, who was standing with me.

“Advanced-level sugar daddy,” she replied in an awed tone. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Churchill Travis.”

“I’ve heard of the Travis
es,
” I replied. “They’re like the Basses in Fort Worth, right? Money people?”

“Honey, in the investment world Churchill Travis is Elvis. He’s on CNN all the time. He’s written books. He owns half of Houston, and he has yachts, jets, mansions…”

Even knowing Angie’s tendency toward hyperbole, I was impressed.

“…and the best part of all is, he’s a widower,” Angie finished. “His wife died not too long ago. Oh, I’m going to find a way to get in that room with him and Zenko. I’ve got to meet him! Did you see the way he just looked at me?”

That provoked a self-conscious laugh. I’d thought he was looking at me, but it had been Angie, it must have been, because she was blond and sexy and men adored her.

“Yes,” I said. “But would you really go after him? I thought you were happy with George.” George was Angie’s current sugar daddy, who had just given her a Cadillac Escalade. It was a loaner, but he’d said she could drive it as long as she wanted.

“Liberty, a smart sugar baby never misses an opportunity to trade up.” Angie sped to the makeup station to reapply eyeliner and lipstick, freshening her face in preparation to meet Churchill Travis.

I went to the cleaning closet and got out a broom to sweep up some hair clippings from the floor. Just as I got started, a stylist named Alan hurried over to me. He was trying to look calm, but his eyes were as big as silver dollars.

“Liberty,” he said in an urgent undertone, “Zenko wants you to bring a glass of iced tea for Mr. Travis. Strong tea, lots of ice, no lemon, two packets of sweetener. The blue packets. Bring it on a tray. Don’t fuck it up, or Zenko will kill us all.”

I was instantly alarmed. “Why me? Angie should bring it to him. He was looking at her. I’m sure she wants to do it. She—”

“He asked for you. ‘The dark-haired little girl,’ he said.
Hurry,
Liberty. Blue packets,
blue
.”

I went to prepare the tea as directed, stirring carefully to make certain every grain of sweetener was dissolved. I had filled the glass to the top with the most symmetrical ice cubes available. When I approached the VIP room, I had to balance the tray on one hand while I opened the door with the other. The ice jiggled dangerously in the glass. I wondered in desperation if a few drops had spilled.

Assuming an implacable smile, I entered the VIP room. Mr. Travis was seated in the chair, facing a huge gold-framed mirror. Zenko was describing possible variations on Mr. Travis’s current hairstyle, which was the standard businessman’s cut. I gathered Zenko was gently hinting that Mr. Travis should try something a little different, maybe allow him to texture and gel it at the top to update his look to something edgier.

I tried to deliver the tea as unobtrusively as possible, but those shrewd dark eyes locked onto me, and Travis turned in his chair to face me as he took the glass from the tray. “What’s your opinion?” he demanded. “Do you think I need updating?”

Considering my reply, I noticed that his teeth were slightly snaggled on the bottom row. As he smiled, it gave him the appearance of a fierce old lion inviting a cub to play. His eyes were warm in his craggy face, an umber glaze permanently seared into the top few layers of skin. Holding his gaze, I felt a small knot of delight form in my throat, and I swallowed it back.

I told him the truth. I couldn’t help it. “I think you’re edgy enough as it is,” I said. “Any more and you’d scare people.”

Zenko’s face went blank, and I was certain he was going to fire me on the spot.

Travis’s laugh sounded like a bag of rocks being shaken. “I’ll go by this young lady’s opinion,” he told Zenko. “Just take a half-inch off the top and taper the back and sides.” He continued to look at me. “What’s your name?”

“Liberty Jones.”

“Where’d you get that name? What part of Texas are you from? You one of the shampoo girls?”

I learned later that Churchill was in the habit of throwing questions out in twos and threes, and if you missed any of them, he repeated them.

“I was born in Liberty County, lived in Houston for a while, then grew up in Welcome. I’m not allowed to do shampoos yet, I’ve just started here and I’m apprenticing.”